Young southerners finding high cotton in our ordinary life

Wood crate bookshelf…How to!

I have been searching for a corner bookcase for a few months now. With no luck, I decided to make something myself. I’ve always loved the look of old wooden crates, but after seeing the price of just one (around $50-$80), I thought I would try making new wooden crates look old by staining. While it’s no perfect match, I still think the bookcase turned out perfectly. Here’s what you need:

Materials (from Michaels and Home Depot):

Qty. 20 screws and nuts (1/4″-20 x3/4″)

Qty. 20 flat washers (1/4″)

4 wheels –Industrial wheels would look awesome, but mine were from Home Depot. Make sure two are lockable.

5 Wood crates (from Michaels…use your 50% off coupon)

Wood stain

Hand sander

I started by sanding each of the wood crates (inside and out).

Next, I stained each of them. In an earlier post I mentioned that the longer the stain stays on the wood, the darker it is. These crates SOAKED up the stain so I literally was brushing the stain on and within seconds rubbing the remainder of the stain off with a rag. Let each crate dry for about 4 hours.

The next step is the add the wheels to the bottom crate. Position the two lockable wheels to the back. drill a hole where the screws will be placed and then screw in all of the wheels.

Here is what the bottom crate looks like with all of the wheels in place.

Now the work is over. I literally just stacked the other crates on top of each other, but for more protection, you could screw each of the crates together! The hardest part of the entire project was finding cute decorative items to fill up the bookcase, besides books (because who has enough books to fill up 5 levels!!) I found some of my decorative items at Target (which has AWESOME items right now)…and others at local antique shops.

Here’s my final project…for now atleast! I’m sure I’ll continue to rearrange the items and add and remove some things. The best part…the total cost was right at $40 (using the 50% coupon at Michael’s REALLY helps).